


The Lonely King

by Sir_Bedevere



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-29
Updated: 2013-10-29
Packaged: 2017-12-30 20:43:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1023170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sir_Bedevere/pseuds/Sir_Bedevere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'The crossbow bullet had come from nowhere. It was a lucky shot, he thinks. He felt something tear into his neck and the next thing he knew, he was here on the ground and his only companions were dead men.'</p>
<p>Written for Stannis FicArt Week!</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lonely King

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt for Stannis FicArt Week: ‘Miles from where you are, I lay down on the cold ground. I pray that something picks me up and sets me down in your warm arms’ (Set the Fire to the Third Bar) The last person Stannis thinks of as he is dying.

The sky is white, as white as the snow on the ground. If it wasn’t for the squat ruin of Winterfell stark against the horizon, it would be hard to tell where one ended and the other started. Stannis turns his head stiffly. Large and looming as it seems, Winterfell is far away, at least a mile from where he is lying.

The battle has moved on, moved away from him and closer to the castle, and now he is alone. It seems no one has noticed he is missing. Davos is not with him. He would have noticed. Now though, there is too much of everything. Too much noise and too many people. They will notice soon enough. They will see his horse has no rider. They will come.

They will be too late.

The crossbow bullet had come from nowhere. It was a lucky shot, he thinks. He felt something tear into his neck and the next thing he knew, he was here on the ground and his only companions were dead men.

He cannot move. He has tried. He has tried and all he can do is turn his head. He will not even be able to die with his blasted sword in his hand; it is still sheathed at his side, away from his useless fingers.

The snow around him is red. 

He can see it from the corner of his eye. His neck is oozing, impossibly slowly, but fast enough that it will still kill him. He is not stupid. He has seen men bleed to death before. He has felt them die, his hands covered in their blood as he tried to staunch the wound.

He knows that he should be feeling the wetness of the snow creeping up his back, but he is grateful that he cannot. He is numb. He is cold but then he can barely remember a time when he was warm. The cold stopped bothering him a long time ago.

His eyes blur and he blinks hard to clear them. If he is going to die, he will die on his terms. He will not die just yet. He can hear the cries, the clash of metal, the screams of horses, from the battlefield. They carry on the still air. Those men have no choice. They will die now and not on their terms. They are dying for him. They are dying for him and he is already gone.

He would laugh, if he had the strength. 

He would laugh if it was funny.

He can feel the cold now. It has come upon him suddenly. Maester Cressen used to say that it was easy to be cold but never easy to be warm, and that a good lord remembered that when he dealt with his Small Folk. He said that nothing should ever be taken for granted because winter came to everyone in the end.

It had come now, that was sure, but the old man had not lived to see it. None of them had, not his parents or his brothers, not his sons, not Davos. Only Stannis. Perhaps it was best that the Maester had gone. He would only have wanted to follow his king to the Wall, and he would have suffered greatly with the cold. The man would have died following him one way or another. 

Stannis wished though that the Maester was here with him now. It is childish, an adolescent fancy, but he will not pretend he does not feel it keenly. He remembers how gentle Maester Cressen’s hands were on that day, a hundred years ago, when he bound Proudwing’s broken wing. He could press his fingers to the wound now and maybe then Stannis would not feel so cold. When he had hurt himself as a child, Cressen had always told him a story to distract him whilst he cleaned the cut and bandaged it. 

Stannis wonders what the story would be now.

_Once upon a time, there was a lonely little boy who grew to be a lonely man and then a lonely king. And the lonely king died by himself, bled his life into the snow, and no one was there to hold his hand._

There would have to be a moral though; the old man always had a moral.

_And the moral, my little lord, is that even lonely kings need to make friends._

I had friends. I had Davos. I had Maester Cressen although I let him die.

The thought comes to his head unbidden. He has never allowed himself to think of it before. He could have stopped it. He could have stopped her. Cressen was the first person who had loved him when he did not have to. Cressen was the first person who had been his friend.

_Kings don’t have friends._

_Yes, they do._

He feels a spasm go through his useless body. He can’t breathe. He can’t breathe.

He wonders if the Stranger came for the maester when he died, there on the floor of the Painted Table Room. Does R’hllor come for his followers? Will he come for him, cloaked in fire and putting out his hand for his Chosen One? 

Or will it be the Stranger, cloaked and terrible and raging at his lack of faith, demanding penance and vengeance for those years and years of lost prayers? 

Or, worst of all, will there be nothing there, nothing but the cold and the darkness? 

Another spasm. 

And then he feels a hand, a warm hand, take his own. The face is blurred. He thinks he has tears in his eyes. He does not know who is there but he hears the words, the words in a voice he misses desperately.

_Even lonely kings need friends, my little lord._


End file.
